There something bracing about good old-fashioned, straight-ahead, Rolling Stones-style rock, and this young Raleigh, North Carolina outfit has it in spades. The band tips its hand on the first track, “She’s Like a Song,” which was made to be blasted at 80 m.p.h. in an Oldsmobile Cutlass headed nowhere and everywhere: “If she’s like a song than I’m like the radio / She’s turnin’ me on and takin’ me out for a ride.” And a wild ride it is, with reedy-voiced J. Chris Smith behind the wheel and mic, Marc E. Smith (not to be confused with Mark E. Smith of The Fall) riding shotgun on lead guitar, and bassman Jesse Huebner leaning in hard, all three of them singing in close harmonies while ex-Whiskeytown drummer Skillet Gilmore revs them down the highway with hair-trigger blasts.

On the band’s 2002 debut, Beestinger Lullabies, singer-songwriter Smith earned his alt.country stripes with plugged-in versions of his solo sets. Too Crowded takes it to the next level with a full-band sound, enhanced by New Orleans producer Trina Shoemaker. Smith has a way with words that packs extra punch into rave-ups like “When You Lie” and “All Washed Up” (“all my excuses are used up / all my memories are used up”). But the crown jewel is “Acetylene,” an expansive, cinematic epic that rolls more than it rocks, and earns every minute of its epic 10-minute running time. “Patience, boy, you really gotta learn how to pace yourself,” Smith tells himself at the outset of a song about a slow slide down, “one sad song at a time,” to the end of a troubled trail. “Acetylene, won’t you light my fumes and burn me clean?” he sings, and it’s not hard to imagine a sea of arena lighters responding to that call.